Carmack Talks Rage PC, Bombastic Trailer

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Mr Carmack was up on stage at QuakeCon last night, and he was talking Rage and PC. Getting the PC version up to speed has, apparently, been one of the sticking points for Rage’s development, which has taken a few years now. Interestingly, release might not be the end of the that particular line of development, either, because Carmack has revealed that he’s already started a new project, and the “research engines” that this new project produces could be added to the PC version of Rage down the line. Quite what this means isn’t clear, but apparently he has a “firm” plan to release this update to PC, as well as a high-quality texture patch. It’s fascinating to see Carmack getting excited about the PC again, a platform whose power he called “crazy”. Increasingly, I suspect, the words out of the mouths of Carmack and other tech gurus are going to be about the untapped potential of the PC, particularly as the archaic specs of 360 and PS3 begin to frustrate those developers who are still interesting in pushing their technology. There’s a bit more detail on Mr C’s talk here.

I had a soft spot for this game for being just so unapologetically oldschool bad ass (the proper kind, not the fake Bullestorm kind). But that trailer just sold me for good. I just want to jump in there!

curiosity piqued: did you actually play bullet*storm? Or are you one of the many people who wrote it off (for GFWL, or because it appears on 360, or because it didn’t have a demo, or because the joke demo they did was SUCH A SLAP IN TEH FACE or for any one of a dozen other bad reasons), never touched it, but still considers it appropriate to call it crap whenever the opportunity presents itself (and awkwardly creating the opportunity when it doesn’t)?

Bulletstorm had me excited. I don’t give a shit about GFWL or steam or whatever, I just want to play games, if those things are necessary, then that’s the hoop I have to hop through untill they stop demanding it. Whatever.
I did play BS, and it was way too slow, it was really flat (as in, the levels were flat, no height differences to accomodate playing on joypads), there was not enough of the fun stuff, some sequences dragged on eternally, far past their fun factor (giant robot monster) and the whole skillshot thing just got really old really fast when all it was was the same thing over and over again., And it was just … slow. And unfun, because getting them to fly in any other way than the same all the time was too annoying and didn’t really matter.
And the too few weapons was also a problem. Why not just let me have all of them in your ridiculous game?
And all the long long cutscenes that had this totally nonsensical macho story…

“you really need to reassess your priorities”
My priorities are set to not wasting my hard earned on something that all of the reasons you mentioned suggest will be crap. It may be that if I played it I would be massively surprised, but it’s not worth the £25-£40 risk.

It’s a hiding to nothing argument, because plenty of games don’t have demos, use GFWL, have annoying marketing things attached to them, or are multi-platform, and we don’t let those “incredibly compelling things” stop us playing them and treating them properly. For example, everything valve makes – demos are extremely rare, most of it’s multi-platform, often they do irritating marketing things. GFWL? Plenty of serious games use GFWL and we don’t just write them off as a result – we bemoan GFWL, sure, but the idea that GFWL integration = no sale is horseshit and needs to be dropped.

What happened is these pretentious toolbags said “Dick jokes? In my srs bsns games? And bonus points for shooting people in the POSTERIOR?! No thankyou” and then used a few paper-thin complaints about the handling of the release to exonerate themselves for condemning a game they had no bloody right to even comment on because they’d never touched it. It’s sickening.

So I stand by my assertion, references to your poor tortured wallet entirely sustained: If you’re HONESTLY saying to me that no demo, irritating marketing, and multi-platform releases are a TOTAL DEALBREAKER then you’ve denied yourself some amazing games like Half-Life 2 and Portal, and hence yes, you absolutely need to readdress your fucking priorities. Or alternatively get real and stop being a lying piece of shit, and admit that you judged Bulletstorm on the box art and that you’re vacuous and shallow. Either is great.

This a thousand times, isn’t it why we all come to games news outlets that seem to cater towards our individual tastes. I purchased Bulletstorm thanks to reviews from several of my favorite games writers, which in my eyes, is more than enough to overcome a poor marketing campaign…..and they were right, I loved every minute.

dammit with every news clip Rage is looking more awesome. im actually quite excited about it at this point.
p.s. its pretty funny how since Inception almost every trailer has this “bwoooop” moment in its soundtrack. or maybe it was always like that and Inception just made the ultimate bwoooooop.

Well, actually, really interesting fact about that BROAAAAMMMM sound. You know how they played Edith Piaf’s song ‘Non, Je Ne Regette Rien’, as a signal to wake up? Well, four or five layers down, that song would have been slowed down by a lot. Guess what that BROAAAAMMMM sound actually is? Yup.

This has been confirmed by Nolan himself. The Composer, Hans Zimmer, actually wrote the entire score using that Edith Piaf song, but made mathematical equations to mix them up and whatnot (something I don’t entirely pretend to understand), so every song in Inception boils down to ‘Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien’.

Another weird coincidence is that Marion Cotillard had just recently played Edith in the biopic ‘La Vie En Rose’, as well as playing Mal in Inception.

I do agree that it is getting used to death now though. Just like ‘O Fortuna’ did, and Clint Mansell’s ‘Requiem For A Dream’. Also, to a certain extent, ‘Invaders Must Die’ by The Prodigy.

I know loads hated the Inception soundtrack, but I personally thought it was great. Although, DeathHamsterDude’s explanation is the intended one (and very cool,) I personally thought it was meant to be the sound of the train in Limbo, when I first saw it.

@skurmedel Ah, that is what that was! I wondering if anyone posted about that. I didn’t know it as the Howie scream yet though, I only recognised it as the Half Life 2 fast zombie sound. Gotta love those reused library sounds :P.

They’ve been fairly consistent on the Linux stuff actually. They’ve said there’s no official plans, and Carmack isn’t really that interested. They do have a guy there, ttimo, that’s said he’ll probably make it a personal project to get a build that works after launch. The osx version, otoh, was supposed to be a launch platform at one point.

Two things:
I thought Rage wasn’t supposed to be a mature game, but I saw an awful lot of decapitated heads in the trailers. Which is good!
Also, I’m pretty sure I heard one of the mutants speak with Mark Hamill’s Joker voice.

What baboonanza said. I mean, sure, decapitation is not for children [sic], but it isn’t the first thing that pops in my mind when somebody mentions a game being “mature”. It would be one of the last things.

Actually, in 2004 he wrote an engine that did realtime per pixel lighting and shading. The RAGE engine does fancy realtime lighting, but they used precalculated lighting for static environments because it comes free with unique texturing.

That sounded a lot like Steve Blum in there too. He’s doing heaps of video game work these days.
Honestly didn’t think I’d be quite so excited about this game. I imagined I’d become a little jaded by the whole dusty post-apocalyptic shooter thing but my finger hovers over the pre-order button about twice a day…

Do you mean what’s IN the Anarchy Edition? From what I’ve seen it’s just some unlockable items in game. Also, you get the Anarchy Edition for no extra charge if you preorder the normal version (if that’s what you were asking instead).

Oh, and now you get a wingstick for TF2 (which is probably what you were asking… Right?).

It’s a shame they couldn’t come up with a better name for the resistance than “The Resistance”. That’s shockingly unimaginative, and leads to the worst line in the trailer: “We call ourselves ‘The Resistance’.”

Except in about 2-3 years they’re going to catch back up with the Xbox 3 and PS4. HOPEFULLY, the current re-interest in PC gaming (primarily due to NPD getting their heads out of their asses and the rise of indie games via digital distribution) means the platform won’t be relegated to the kid’s table again when the next console generation hit.

EDIT: Also, this site has done an exquisite job providing a nice central focal point for all the wonderful things the PC platform has to offer.

Well, that trailer makes the game look derivative and predictable. The ‘Room with the big spinny thing’ that is in every shooter in existence, the gruff talking badass that’s in every shooter, the big bloke with the big gun that looks at you and screams, the wasteland that looks like every other wasteland. Can’t say this one’s on my radar at all.

One of the few people I have any time for in this industry. Great to hear John’s genuine passion the last couple of months.

It’s rare to have someone from a company show true enjoyment from just coding and working on new theories and ideas and not just marketing gumph and corporate spiel trying to get you to part with your cash. Then again Id have always given so much back to their community.